CIA rejects diversity efforts that are once considered essential for its mission

After the Cold War was over and again after the attacks of 11 September, a series of CIA directors and congress trailers insisted the agency to diversify its ranks.

The drive had little to do with any feeling of racial justice, civil rights or fairness. It was rather a hard national security decision.

The leaders of the agency had started to believe that having analysts from a range of backgrounds would lead to better conclusions. Officers with cultural knowledge would see things that others might miss. Case officers who reflected the diversity of America would go through foreign cities more easily without being detected.

“If there is one place that there is a clear business case for diversity, it is at the CIA and intelligence services,” said Senator Mark Warner, a democrat in Virginia, a long -term senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “You must have spies around the world in all countries. They cannot all be white men, or our intelligence collection will suffer.”

But what was once a dual emphasis on the importance of diversity at the agency is confronted with new pressure. Under the Trump government, the CIA has moved to dismantle its recruitment programs, in particular those who have tried to bring racial and ethnic minorities into the organization, which is usually white.

John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, says that these steps are about making a color -blind organization that is exclusively aimed at hiring and promoting people based on merit.

Defenders of the recruitment of diversity say that the struggle to integrate the agency is abandoned when it is only partially completed. In the 1980s, white men filled 90 percent of the skilled leadership positions. Those figures started to fall a decade later when the agency recruited and promoted more women and minorities.

The recruitment helped, although it did not result in a spy agency that looked exactly like America. Ten years ago, the last time the desk released detailed songs, more women had moved to Topbaan. But people with racial or ethnic minority backgrounds were only a quarter of the agency and the representation in leadership roles that were left much further.

Critics of the movements of the Trump government fear that without aggressive recruitment of minorities, the CIA will be less able to perform his mission to work secretly in every country in the world and steal secrets for the United States.

Mr. Ratcliffe not only made the efforts to recruit diversity, but also started to dismiss the officers who were assigned to them. Other high-ranking CIA officials argued that the officers were allowed to transfer to other jobs at the agency, but they were canceled by Mr. Ratcliffe, who quoted President Trump’s orders to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Suddenly CIA officers who had been assigned to find the next generation of espionage plants – even those who had worked on recruiting at mainly white universities – on the chopping block.

Liz Lyons, a CIA spokeswoman, defended that decision.

“CIA will be the ultimate meritocracy that employs officers, develops, authorizes and retains that are steadily focused on our mission to recruit spies and to collect foreign intelligence better than any other intelligence organization in the world,” she said.

A federal court stopped the dismissal, imposed a temporary order in itself and then ordered the agency to appeal and consider the officers for other functions. Last week the government appealed against the judge’s order.

Defenders of the fired officers claim that there was no reason to let them go. They were not experts in the field of staff or diversity. They were chosen spies for an initiative that was important for earlier administrations.

“There are no dei officers, there are only intelligence officers at CIA,” said Darrell Blocker, a former senior CIA officer who led the training efforts of the agency and is black.

The first Trump administration was not so hostile to efforts to diversify the agency. Under Gina Happel, who, as the first woman who led the agency, served as a director for a large part of Mr. Trump’s first term, the CIA continued to recruit various candidates.

In 2020 the agency was made First television streaming advertisementTo demonstrate to women and minorities that the agency appreciated according to an official at the time.

The advertisement of one minute shows a group of officers – People of color, women and white men – are brought into the desk. An experienced employee who gives lectures on the recruits is black. A language expert is of South Asian descent. The senior officers who order an overseas operation are women. And a case officer who performs a brush pass with a source in the field is a black woman.

Now the CIA has made a new recruitment video. It focuses on technology and shows a whiter group of officers, according to people who have seen it.

It is not the first retreat of diversity in the history of American intelligence. The spy organization that preceded the CIA -valued diversity in a way that her successor did not do in the early years.

Major Gen. William J. Donovan, the director of the predecessor of the agency, the Office of Strategic Services, recruited women and black Americans to be one of his “glorious amateurs” who perform secret operations during the Second World War.

In a speech after the Oss was closed – and before the CIA took its place – General Donovan emphasized the diversity of the group he had collected.

“We came to the end of an unusual experiment,” he said. “This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans who were a cross -section of racial origin, of skills, temperaments and talents could risk a meeting with the long -established and well -trained enemy organizations.”

While the Pentagon has started purifying material that the diversity of the armed services, the CIA did not start working on its history. The website of the agency still has a page that emphasizes the quote from General Donovan And the contributions of black, Japanese American, Spanish and female Oss officers.

“Bill Donovan acknowledged that diversity was our strength,” said Mr. Blocker.

But the dedication of General Donovan to a diverse force did not pass when the CIA was founded in 1947.

“Despite the best measures from Donovan, it was actually:” Ok little ladies, go back to the kitchen, “said Mr. Blocker.

It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that started change on a larger scale.

John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the agency, said that the perceptions about the needs of the desk began to shift.

“From that moment it was generally understood that diversity was not only something fun to have, it was a business requirement,” said Mr. McLaughlin. “You really needed people who could go up in different parts of the world, and who didn’t look. I go up in Ireland and that is not useful for anyone.”

The urge to a more diverse workforce increased after the attacks of 11 September, because the middle -east and terrorism became top priorities. Members of the congress criticized the agency because they did not have enough Arabic, Dari and Pashto speakers, and too few officers concentrated in the middle and central -Asia.

Mr. McLaughlin said that the CIA analysts brought in who had family ties and cultural knowledge of the countries and societies they studied, alongside deep academic knowledge.

Teams of officers with a series of experiences and backgrounds can be more skilled in reading between the rules of statements of authoritarian governments, and more aware of cultural differences in the way others express themselves.

“The point is that if someone grew up in a different culture or at least experienced it, they will have a different perspective,” said Mr. McLaughlin. “And you want different perspectives in the room.”

Not everyone buys the argument that Chinese Americans make better case officers in Beijing than anyone else.

When he ran the Cia’s Near East Division, Daniel Hoffman, a retired senior Clandestine Services Officer, said he worked hard to eliminate bias in promotions and potential discrimination and to ensure that promotions were based on merit.

That, he said, provided a stronger and more diverse agency.

But recruiting spies and stealing secrets abroad is about good tradecraft and language ability, Mr Hoffman said.

Mr Hoffman, who developed fluently in four languages ​​as he served at the CIA, said that the agency had an impressive report of training non-Chinese American officers to control Mandarin.

For Mr Hoffman, promoting people was only because they were female or from a minority background was counterproductive, but he said to ensure that no one was stopped because of their gender, ethnicity or gender reflected the core values ​​of the nation and made the CIA stronger.

“We just need the best people from the desk,” said Mr Hoffman. “We have to hire and promote the best people without susceptible bias.”

Mr. Blocker said that he did not disagree with the idea that a talented officer could be trained in good trade and language skills. But he said that the most effective stations he served had a diverse group of officers.

He grew up on Okinawa and served in South Korea during a Stint in the Air Force. When he came to the CIA in 1990, he knew he wanted to work on Asian issues. He spent his first months as Soviet weapons and tactic analyst who specializes in North Korea.

He was planning to make his career as an Asia specialist, until he William Mosebey Jr.

“This man knew more about Africa than who I had ever met,” said Mr. Blocker. Mr. Mosebey could get every African leader on the phone, hire a diverse bank of officers and taught them how to recruit any form of source.

“As much as I didn’t want to be a black guy who went to Africa, after meeting Bill Mosebey, it changed my life,” said Mr. Blocker.

Mr. Mosebey, who was white, believed in the interest of having people of many perspectives in his stations, and fetched Mr. Blocker about to join his team.

“Black officers in the Africa division were easier to merge than white officers from the past, but we always had a good mix of people: black, white, male, female,” said Mr. Blocker. “I served at a number of stations. I have never served where they had no other black officer.”

Former officials said that it was essentially the reason why the CIA tried to pursue diversity: to lean in the competitive advantage that American society offers.

“This is not Kumbaya,” said Mr. McLaughlin. “The whole idea of ​​waking is stupid in this context. Diversity is not fun to have, it is a business requirement.”